


Space and Time (The Two Axes Remix)

by Isis



Category: due South
Genre: Community: remixthedrabble, Double Drabble, M/M, Remix, Unconventional Format
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-04
Updated: 2008-04-04
Packaged: 2019-06-12 03:35:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15330855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: There is no difference between time and any of the three dimensions of space except that our consciousness moves along it -- H.G. Wells, The Time Machine





	Space and Time (The Two Axes Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Space and Time](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11136180) by [Nos4a2no9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nos4a2no9/pseuds/Nos4a2no9). 



> Written for Remix the Drabble round 4. Probably won't look good on mobile; if the two sides are misaligned, try making the window wider. Work skin based on La_Temperanza's [newspaper column skin tutorial](http://teekettle.tumblr.com/post/124765663544/original-article-live-example-of-skin-my-ao3).

Canada, Ray thinks, is space. Big space, white space. Miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles. He's driven across Alberta (and he's never doing that again), and he's mushed across the Yukon, and he's looked across the MacKenzie River. Canada? Really fucking huge. Full of space.  
  
The Consulate in Chicago was Canada, too, holding its space like a blank spot on the city map. Fraser is Canada, in his own way, so he's got space in him. Sometimes Ray catches a glimpse of it.  
  
Ray wants to fill that space. He wants to be Fraser's home. Like Canada.  
  
America, Fraser thinks, is time. Time searching for his father, time in exile, time that would have passed unbearably slowly but for two men named Ray. He measures his stay in Chicago by them, remembers events according to which of them had been there. America is seconds and minutes and hours and, eventually, years.  
  
Time is defined by its endpoints, cradling itself within its span like the sweep of a clock's second hand. When Fraser returns to Canada, Ray Kowalski is with him, bringing his American time into Canadian space.  
  
Space and time: two axes. Home is where they intersect.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> My favorite thing I wrote for round 4. For the most part I discarded the bits of narrative, the actual story about Ray coming to Canada with Fraser, about his interaction with the people there, about Fraser's adjustment to having Ray with him. But I don't feel as though I took the core of Nos's idea and built a whole new story around it; I kind of see it as - you know how a sculptor talks about freeing the statue that's already within the rock? I could see another story that was at the heart of Nos's story, and I stripped away the words until I found it.
> 
> The thing is, Nos is a different type of writer than I am (which we notice when we beta each others' stories!). She is amazing at imbuing the characters with real emotion and motivation that spills out onto the page. Her stories ramble and swell with detail that pulls the reader along. Me, I have to be reminded to put any description at all in, and I write in a much more tightly-controlled way.
> 
> I adore formal structure, so the instant I read (well, re-read) her story, I thought, "ooh! this would be so cool as parallel sections!" and immediately the whole space-time imagery was clear, the idea of intersecting axes, which is a bit of a pun, of course, on dS canon. I decided to pare things down to 100 words on each side, because that way I could avoid working with the actual narrative events, and just focus on the single, shining idea at the heart of the story.
> 
> I started each section with Nos's words, and pulled a lot of imagery (as well as cadence and style) directly from her story. I think the only real thematic difference is tying it together with the last sentence on Fraser's side, which in retrospect, maybe I should have finished with some nod to her "history" line, and then used my sentence as a last line spanning both columns, mirroring the title. But I wanted a perfect 100+100 words!


End file.
